How to Spend It

How does one give their all without actually giving up everything, I wonder

On my birthday in 2015, a friend of mine and I were in Juan Les Pins, in the South of France, walking along the corniche there, all dudded up in our best impression of the louts in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. On a bit of a lark, we went into the casino in Antibes and I put five euros on the roulette table. A few spins and five minutes later I somehow had something like 500 euros, which I scooped up and rushed out the door before they could stop me.

With this new booty, my friend and I went on to the Belles Rives, where Fitzgerald had stayed for a long stretch when writing Tender is the Night, and where there is a glorious little bar with a great terrace, and we demanded all of the finest wines available to humanity. I made it a point that we had to spend the entirety of the new winnings that night, because, well, I don’t know, because I am terrible with money, or because it felt like we were playing with house money and they would come for it before long. (Speaking of Withnail & I, whence the quote about finest wines, Bruce Robinson, who wrote and directed Withnail, once told me about finding a blind item at an estate sale, and buying it only to discover that it was something like 1000 bottles of the greatest vintages of the previous century. Had he sold the collection of wine right then at auction he might’ve been set for life, or at least for a time, and at the moment he was in terribly dire straits financially and career-wise. What he did instead he always seemed to believe was the heroic alternative: He drank every last bottle — and it is part of my general toxicity and derangement I guess, that I have always loved these sorts of stories, that valorize the experience of life and the adventure, the stories we bring back from beyond — but of course I recognize how entitled and reckless it is to make rent and reality an afterthought, and, trust, reality is really calling my bluff at the moment…. ).

I recently did a podcast with my pals at John Lobb, in part about the Beard book and about traveling and things. But at one point Marc Beauge, who did the interview, asked me about life goals or 5 year plans and I was totally unprepared. In a kind of reflex response, and giving voice to something I didn’t know that I knew, I said, essentially, that I simply didn’t want to leave anything in the tank. I don’t want to keep anything in store. Want to give to friends and work and whatever else everything I am, everything I have, everything I can do. Want to leave it all on the field, as they say. When I go, I want zeroes across the board, want my credit cards and body maxed, and maybe even some back rent due.

Which is all well and good if you can time it out right. But I’ve been living the last two years of my life as if it were my birthday at the Belles Rives, thinking, convinced, that either I was gonna go or the world was gonna end before 2024. Which is not exactly a terrific financial plan. Or the height of self care. It is not, actually, a plan at all, but what you do when you are acting against the idea of plans themselves, consciously or not. And I am spent.

Oh — as I was writing this, a friend shared that famous quote by Annie Dillard, about writing, about creativity, which we manics seem to also apply to life and money:

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

I recognize that I am not alone in feeling like ashes at the moment, that I am not the only one who feels they are living in extremis all the time. Reading through some of the substacks I subscribe to, I was reminded again — again and again — that everyone everywhere is in the fight of their lives. Of course we know this and have it refreshed in our minds continuously and still it is easy to forget that everyone you know is hanging on by the very tips of their fingernails. And maybe all we can do, maybe all we are even supposed to do, in total, is spread a little care where we can, show solidarity, share whatever insights and Netflix recommendations we’ve got, ha. What is the Ram Dass thing, that we’re just walking each other home?

I know we are all worked up about the existential threat posed by AI, to our jobs and then to everything else, but I don’t know that computer programming can offer that — solidarity, community, meaning, worth, etc. I know that the world seems to continually empower and celebrate terrible men, that the bad guys seem to be winning in almost every sphere of life. But maybe that makes the mission even more important. To nurture and protect the ones close to you, to give good recs, to spend all of the love you have on everyone everywhere all of the time, in the complete confidence that it will replenish itself, that all the creativity you exhaust on building a better world will make room for more, will bring about bigger, deeper, more beautiful and pure creativity, will summon more of it from you. Inspiration in action brings about still more inspiration, Cassavetes always said. Spend all of your love and inspiration all the time, every day, every chance you get. Just maybe not all of your money.